Sestertius - Nero DECVRSIO S C

The DECVRSIO type records a military exercise — a cavalry parade drill — performed by Nero himself, almost certainly staged as propaganda following the early years of his reign when cultivating martial credibility was politically essential for an emperor with no genuine military record. Nero never commanded a campaign in person. The sestertius did some of the work his biography could not.

RIC I 172 belongs to the Rome mint output of Nero's middle-to-late reign, a period when the sestertius series reached an artistic peak under skilled engravers whose work would not be matched again until Trajan.